The nexus of climate change and health is an increasingly urgent area for policy attention. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report made clear that climate change threatens human wellbeing through extreme heat, disease spread, mental health challenges, food insecurity, and air pollution, while also showing that climate action brings well-documented health co-benefits.

Health is now more prominent in multilateral climate processes, from the health target under the Global Goal on Adaptation to successive COP initiatives and the latest NDCs. Building on the Belém Health Action Plan and the Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, COP 31 offers a key opportunity to advance this agenda, with "Dynamic and Resilient Health Systems" a priority theme of its Action Agenda.

Against this backdrop, Wellcome Trust and Clima Trust, in partnership with the Republic of Fiji, are convening a high-level gathering on the sidelines of Pre-COP 31, bringing together policymakers, negotiators, researchers, and other relevant actors to raise the political profile and ambition around the health-climate nexus, and to ensure its messages are elevated as COP 31 approaches.